waves

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

The situation might be different, but the heart's desire is the same. Thank you, God, for answering our prayer! We cannot wait to be parents to this precious little girl.

And she said, "Oh, my lord! As you live, my lord, I am the woman who was standing here in your presence, praying to the LORD. For this child I prayed, and the LORD has granted me my petition that I made to him. Therefore I have lent him to the LORD. As long as he lives, he is lent to the LORD."

I have several business/paperwork updates, but I've been too excited to talk business. Maybe soon. :)

Monday, October 24, 2011

Don't forget to order some Scentsy gifts! ALL money will help bring Gia home. Yes, Gia, who now has a face to the name. Praise the Lord!

The invoice we received Friday was a HUGE number, but a sweet friend quickly reminded me that it's pocket change to our God. I love that. We are trusting that the fundraisers we are working on, including Scentsy, are honoring to Him and His call for our Gia's adoption.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Disclaimer: My head is full tonight, so I might ramble. I promise I'll try to make it make sense.

I'll start with the treats...

Today Kevin and I got a very fun phone call. As I sat at lunch with my teacher friends in a loud, adolescent filled cafeteria my phone rang. We had all been glued to it, waiting for the news. Side note here: I love love love working at my school. There is just so much support. So when it finally rang at 12:42 pm I practically ran into the hallway. J from Holt greeted me and I asked if I could call Kevin to 3-way him in. Once he was on the phone, she said something like, "I'm glad you're both on the phone for this because I have some great news. You've been selected!" We both thanked her profusely. Why did we thank her? She didn't do anything. Maybe it was our natural southern instinct to just express our appreciation. Regardless, she was thrown at least six thank yous between the two of us. And that was it. The whole call lasted about 3 minutes.
Everyone has the same two questions now: When will we get her? What are the next steps?
I know you're shocked to hear this answer, but we don't know. We have read the wait time is anywhere between 3-9 months. My guess is we'll be on the latter end of that. Kevin and I have agreed to pray for travel in April. As far as what's next, I am waiting on an email that tells me those steps. All I know is that Korea will be informed of the match and we'll go from there.
When I walked back into the lunchroom after taking the phone call, the ENTIRE cafeteria was cheering and clapping, teachers and students. I'm not sure the students knew why they were cheering, but they were completely sold out for it!
In fact, one kid told me later, "So I thought something big happened."
To which I responded, "Well, that was kinda big for me."
And he said, "No, I mean, like, to America."

Gotcha.

Lots of hugs, tears, and high-fives (I don't hug my male students) were exchanged and it was a grand 2 minute celebration. Ahhhh....

I had TONS, absolutely tons of texts and emails coming in immediately, and they were all precious and warmed my soul. The one that really made the news real was from my friend Liz. Her email was only two sentences. Just saw this on the photo listing site. We are so blessed to know her family.
With this picture attached.

Oh. My. Word. I was speechless.

So here's the colorful picture because I know you'd rather see that. :)

My students also left me these little messages on my board after lunch.

And now for the tricks...

Upon hearing my news, my students went into full Q&A mode. This can be dangerous when you teach unfiltered teenagers. These are some of the lovely conversations I was involved in today.

Student: Why are you adopting? Can't you just make one?
Me: Well, God told us to adopt so we did.
Student: Whatever.

Student #1: What are you gonna name her?
Me: Probably Gia.
Student #2: What? What kind of name is Gia?
Me: Seriously? You don't think that was kind of rude the way you asked that?
Student #2: I just think it's a stupid name.

Student: When she comes home, she'll just speak Korean for the rest of her life, huh?
Me: Yep, they come pre-programmed like that.

Student: Are you adopting from Korea so she can do your nails?
Me: I had no comment for this one. And it was wise that I held my tongue. I'm sure my face said it all.

Monday, October 17, 2011

Our interview for Baby Girl is TODAY at 5:00 our time. That's 20 minutes!
Committee will meet Thursday to pick a family (between us and one other family). We will know something Thursday afternoon, probably.

Pray for us for clarity and peace. Pray for Baby Girl that God would start preparing her heart to leave the only place she knows as home. This process will be far worse for her than the family getting her.

Thursday, October 13, 2011

First of all, I cannot figure out why my own blog won't let me comment on it anymore, so I want to take a moment to say THANKS to the nize07 for your very sweet comment. I got it in my email this morning as I arrived at school and it blessed my day! It was precious to read, and I will absolutely send a shirt to Australia!!! That's so cool. Just tell me how to get it there, ha!
Also, a big THANKS to the Gronewold family and Eunice (The Korean). It was fun to hear from you guys and I'm happy you found the blog! I'd love to keep in touch and hear more about your stories.

Now on to some very exciting news...

Over the past 10 days we have received three or four Korean referrals. This is such a refreshing blessing because I've been a little bummed about just doing the business side of the adoption and missing out on the babies' faces! Our patience has been answered with two precious girls that we want to pursue. Each referral is $350 to have reviewed by the clinic we are using, and we knew we couldn't send both files over because that would be $700 that we didn't have. So, we prayed about it and felt a draw to one specific girl, and we sent her file over yesterday.

Let me tell you how cool God is right now. Not only did we not have $700, but truly we weren't sure where the $350 would come from. I remembered we had had a lot of tshirt orders lately, so I checked my PayPal where I found $200. Yay! Transfer to bank, done. Plus we had $80 from RoF's release show last week where a few people bought shirts. Another yay! So $280 is definitely better than none. We pulled the remaining $70 from our own little checking account and sent the baby's file over.

The doctor called today to give us a run down of her current and potential medical needs. We liked what she said, and we felt comfortable with her explanations.

Much like before, we now enter a waiting game. There are two other families that are looking at her file, I know. I'm not sure if they will decide to move forward with her, but we have put in our "yes." So now we wait. If we are the only "yes" family, then she will be ours! We are both hesitant to even discuss how this will turn out because we know all too well that it could be in another family's favor. We are praying for this girl to find the family God has for her, whether it's us or not. Please join us in that prayer. We'd love love love to parent her, but we know that God's ways are higher than our own and we want to be obedient to His will for our lives (and that baby's) instead of our own selfish will.

Friday, October 7, 2011

I just finished filling out the last of our Show Hope application. One question asked for a statement of faith from each parent, and as I typed mine I realized I hadn't shared it with you. How does this relate to adoption, you ask? Because I'm adopted. If you are a child of God, you are adopted too. God has picked us to be his children. We were once strangers and rebels, and he brought us into his Kingdom home to be his children. Wow. Seriously, let that sink in.

There is nothing, not one thing, that we can do to earn God's love and favor. We cannot work our way into his heart or into Heaven. We can't pray enough or read the Bible enough or be good enough to be His. 1 John 4:19: “We love Him because He first loved us.” If it were up to me to initiate this relationship, I never would have done it. I'm human, made to crave the things of this world. God is holy. Why would I want that if the world offers things to tantalize my figurative taste buds? Why have broccoli when there's cookies? The things of God are not a natural craving; God places that desire in us.

Ok, so here's my story in a nutshell...

I became aware of my salvation in 7th grade at a Disciple Now weekend my church hosted. I say I became aware because in Jeremiah 1:5 the bible teaches, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." I believe I’ve been saved and set apart from before I was born but I came to fully understand that at the age of 12ish.

However, I have known since I was young that there’s a God, that’s He’s real, and that I’m something to Him. I didn’t know how I fit into all that, but I did have a basic understanding of it. I remember being 7 or 8 and trying to sit still enough in my house so that I could audibly hear God because someone told me that God talks to us.
God used my youth minister a lot leading up to my “salvation experience.” He constantly shared with us that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23) and "There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God” (Romans 3:10-18). The truth of the matter was that I thought being a good person was all I needed in my Christian walk and my pride kept telling me that I wasn’t as bad as those other people. The fact is that I AM that bad, and WORSE! God gave me a clear view of who I really am, not who America tried to tell me I was. At that moment I knew I needed a Savior. Someone perfect that would take the wrap for me. Enter, Jesus. My life verse has become “Since my youth, oh God, you have taught me, and to this day I declare your marvelous deeds," Psalm 71:17.

I still struggle with anger, pride, selfishness, greed, just to name a few, but the good news is that God is showing me my sin and refining me through the sanctification process. I’m no longer blind to my sin, no longer think I’ve got it all figured out. I’m a sinner and God is telling me that on a daily basis. Thank God for Jesus!

Let me tell you that NOTHING you have done or can ever do is too bad for God. He takes the worst of the worst into his arms and makes us his children. I may not have been saved from drug addiction or prostitution, but I was saved from myself. I can tell you that that is a miracle!

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Kevin's been out and about doing his thang with the new album release, and I learned that he's been sharing our adoption story from stage. How exciting! We are such open people (sometime too open and honest), so we love having new friends hopping in on our journey. I'd like to take this moment to say hello to those new people that may be finding this blog for the first time.

Hey, y'all! That's southern for "hello all of you." :)

Please stop by regularly and pray with us and for us. We also have A LOT of friends adopting, so please check out their sites and pray for them too.